Study: New York has fewer illegal immigrants

New York was home to about 750,000 of the nation’s illegal immigrants in 2010, which was fewer compared to California, Texas and Florida, a Center for Migration Studies’ International Migration Review reported today.

New York and 29 other states experienced a decline in illegal immigrant population by 2009 while Florida and other states in the South continued to have an increase in unauthorized immigrants, the review said, reports Gannett’s Haley Viccaro. New York had 35,000 fewer immigrants than compared to 2009.

In 2010, California had 3 million unauthorized immigrants, 1.6 million in Texas and 1 million in Florida, the academic journal reported. New York ranked in the top six states with the greatest number of illegal immigrants in 2010 but trailed far behind California, Texas and Florida.

The states with the greatest number of unauthorized immigrant populations in 2010 included California, Texas, Florida, New York, Illinois and New Jersey. In all six states, the number of illegal immigrants increased in the 1990s and peaked in 2000.

New York, California and Texas combined had a decrease of more than 165,000 illegal immigrants in 2009.

There are about 11.7 million illegal immigrants that lived in the United States in January 2010. California, Texas, Florida and New York combined housed more than half of the population.